Friday, August 23, 2013

Bill Webb of Frog God Games made an announcement today on Facebook concerning the next stage in the "Lost Lands" campaign setting (something I very much look forward to):

Hey all…here it comes, and soon. In about two weeks, Frog God Games will begin its new Kickstarter on the next installment of the temple of elemental….I mean the Lost Lands.

Yours truly has made arrangements to take some time off of my day job to….you won’t believe it…finish Sword of Air. After 14 years of waiting, this multi-phase adventure and sourcebook of the Necromancer Games (meaning me) home game world will come to light. This adventure and setting have been referenced in every book I have ever written, all the way back to Crucible of Freya.

I have resurrected all my old notebooks and (literally) typewritten manuscripts. Found all my old drawings and maps, playtested several sections of the adventure at the last few conventions, and am ready to finally bang this thing out. This adventure series links strongly to Rappan Athuk, Slumbering Tsar, Stoneheart Valley and many other old Necromancer Games books as well. Those links will be expanded here as well.

The underlying quest is to recover the lost fragments of a mythical artifact known as the Sword of Air, an icon of Law and Good, and perhaps the only thing that can stop the foul minions of Tsathogga from overrunning the earth. This adventure itself is geared for 1st-20th level players (truly a sandbox), with the main storyline being set for levels 5-15 (really 3-12 for Swords and Wizardry). The book will be produced in both Pathfinder and Swords and Wizardry formats.

SIGNIFICANT deluxe editions will be available for you collectors. Two premium editions are planned; one leather embossed, and one, well, you will have to wait and see, but my printer is referring to it as the “nuclear” edition. I am estimating page count at 500 (may vary), and all versions will contain a large fold out map of the region as a stretch goal. Premium editions may have a few extra features related to the map itself. Additional stretch goals will include full color printing, additional material (for all!), and possibly an exclusive, Kickstarter only, module.

Currently, this book consists of several parts.

1. The Hel’s Temple Dungeon—kind of like Tomb of Horrors on crack. This six level trap and puzzle infested dungeon formed the basis of my game through my high school and college years. Clark Peterson’s very own Bannor the Paladin spent several real life months in the place, and sadly, finished the objective. This is where the fragments of the fabled Sword of Air can be found…perhaps.

2. The wilderness area to the west of Rappan Athuk and extending into the goblin filled Cragnook Mountains, providing detail about the Wizards Wall (created like the Great Wall of China to keep the goblins at bay by the great wizards Margon and Alickthron (actual player characters from the early 1980’s). Over 70 unique encounter areas are detailed, each one an mini-adventure in itself.

3. The Ruined City of Tsen. Sister City to Tsar, and destroyed at nearly the same time by what many believe was a falling meteor. This place forms and aboveground dungeon area the size of a city, with over 100 detailed encounter areas. It’s a very dark place…even at noon.

4. The Wizard’s Feud—This campaign style adventure pits the players in a long-running series of intrigues and battles between two archmages. Which side will they take? Their actions all play into the overall quest, and could well determine which side wins. Law and Chaos are not always what they seem, and if the wrong decisions are made, the entire ordeal could fail. Remember, one of the wizards WANTS Tsathogga to win.

5. New Gods and Demons of the world, new spells, and new rules for various aspects of play.

That’s it for now. I’ll update this prior to the Kickstarter initiating.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

In 1992 Skybox created the Marvel Masterpieces line of collectible cards featuring characters from Marvel Comics. To outdo themselves, Fleer decided that the 1994 set would be completely done by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt. Bringing these world renowned fantasy artists on for an exclusive set made the already popular Marvel Masterpieces skyrocket in sales, being one of Fleer's top selling card sets of that year. The piece that I have chose for this week is a depiction of the X-men's Archangel from the 1995 set.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Attention lovers of randomly rolling die, we are in the midst of a (1st world) crisis. According to this post on the Awesome Dice Blog GameStation (the current owners of Lou Zocchi's GameScience) are not production any GameScience precision die at this time. GamStation has some sets still available on their website, but is not producing precision Zocchi die at present. I had become curious about this, as Noble Knight Games even seems to be running short on much of their stock (especially full sets including the "Zocchi Die" made popular by DCC RPG.) Buy them up while you can. For the near future production is estimated to be low.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

I suppose this will be a thing for me now. Posting about not having been at Gen Con (and yes, I am aware that I came late to the game and it has ended at the time of this posting) will be an annual thing (unless of course I get up to Gen Con one of these days.) Despite not going I had a very productive weekend on the gaming and sci-fantasy front.

Friday night kicked off with our usual game night playing my Castles & Crusades Stoneheart Valley/Rappan Athuk campaign. I am very pleased with how the campaign has worked itself out over the past year and a quarter that it has been running. We recently (just over a month ago) lost a great player in the campaign due to a mandatory move out of state for work reasons. However, I am very pleased as over the past few weeks we have regained three players that had left for various reasons (the third returning just this past Friday.) A few weeks prior we also regained one of the campaign's founding members (who in reality had been playing occasional solo quests with me when time permitted to keep up on the plot and in level.) The campaign, overall, is doing quite well being a blend of classic judgement crawl and business/society management. The players have been buying up businesses and property in Bard's Gate for some time now, and that has led to a very interesting game.

Saturday was highly eventful as my daughter went to spend the night at my parent's house. I went to have some initial work done on a tattoo that I have been wanting for some time. The work is actually being done by a friend and player from my games. He is exceptionally talented when it comes to translating comic, animation and I venture to guess will be good at early era TSR D&D art as well. The piece that I am currently having done, however, is not directly related. He is doing something that I have wanted for quite a long time, that being the "classic image" of Necron 99/Peace from Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. The image I am having done (with now has linework, black shading and Peace's red uniform complete) is the image seen in the movie poster. Thus far the image is amazing. I will have pictures up when it is completed, until then I will give you a look at the poster and DVD covers that it is based upon.

Following a few hours of tattoo work, those present ordered pizza and we kicked off a sporadic "when we have time for this" Mutant Future campaign that we have all been looking forward to for some time now. That went swimmingly well and the first session was an absolute blast. That said, I need to make reference sheets for all of the tables so that I don't have so much page flipping to do during the game. The game is a sandbox set in the region of the Great Lakes "after the bomb." I am very pleased with it.

Today ended the weekend as I have a great groups of buddies who opted to go see Kick-Ass 2, which also did not disappoint. I won't post any spoilers here though! All in all, this was a near perfect old school gaming weekend for me! Hope you had fun at Gen Con, if you attended.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

This is the cover to Conan the Savage #6 (Marvel, 1996.) A wonderful representation of our favorite Hyborian age barbarian by the brothers. The black and white series ran all of 10 issues during the mid nineties.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

So, I haven't read it, but it seems that there is a free PDF magazine devoted to AD&D! That by itself is pretty sweet. So, I will let you know what I think once I get around to reading it. Before that, however, I must finish reading and reviewPalace of the Vampire Queen and The Gazetteer Writer's Manual. Until then, click here to check it out yourself!

Monday, August 12, 2013

It seems that these days people are devising badges and logos for the OSR by region. These tend to be one of the standard OSR logo's with a region such as "Up State New York" above or under it. I have yet to see one for Michigan, so I made one. I decided to be a bit different in my design and map our state in hex. Fly it proudly if you support the OSR in Michigan!

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

I started these out with Fantasy, showcasing Greg and Tim's "Balrog." Next I sent you to the arena of Sci-Fi with the original "Star Wars" poster. Today I offer you a new genre, delving into the realm of horror with a piece from Greg Hildebrandt's "Dracula" collection. This one comes from an edition of Dracula by The Unicorn Publishing House, Inc. published in 1985. This image is depicted on the cover. I've been in a "vampire" kind of mood ever since receiving my reprint of Palace of the Vampire Queen, which was, as you may know, the first module ever published for use with D&D. I intend to have a review up shortly.